So Ready

It’s been quiet over here because I have been struggling to find something to say. This is my last week of work and I am not sleeping and I am uncomfortable and feeling crummy and I don’t want to be going into the office at all. I have so many things I want to be doing at home, which is the absolute exact opposite of how I felt with Gabe. I kind of can’t believe I am stopping working this early. Months before due date? Not days? What is that?

This pregnancy I don’t like people looking at me. I don’t like feeling so exposed. I didn’t last pregnancy either but there was a kind of novelty to being PREGNANT – this existence I had only vaguely dreamed up my whole life before I actually was. So in a way, it was a tiny bit thrilling even though I didn’t like the comments or the assumptions. But this time around…. I don’t like that I can walk into a room and everyone can immediately put a label on me. In general, when I am alone and not pregnant, I can be a lot of things. I can be single, childless, younger or older than I am, I can be invisible if I want. But not right now. Right now I am pregnant mother of 1, soon to be 2. Pregnant mother of a toddler. Or just pregnant. People immediately glance down at my stomach when I walk by them. I look at pregnant women too. I smile to myself about them. They (ridiculously when I say this out loud) give me hope. Pregnant women are beacons of promise. Who is in there? Someone fresh and new, that’s who. Maybe even someone better.

I do not feel like a beacon of promise. I feel awkward and slow and sick and sleepless and sore.

I feel guilt. I hate that I can’t be the energetic, capable mom I was before this pregnancy to Gabe. I hate that I have to hand him off to Kamel because I can’t carry around his 33 lbs as much as he wants. I hate that I feel like I’m pushing Gabe towards his dad in a way that I can’t make even at the moment. I can’t encourage our relationship the way Gabe needs. I’m too big, I’m too slow, I’m too sore. I’m busy building a new human. I have guilt.

I want to hybernate. I want to nest. I want to clean out closets and organize bedrooms and I want the time to do it. It is nearing distraction level this feeling of PREPARE. It is time to get things ready. In the beginning I had no inclination to buy new things for this second baby, I had no issue reusing all the items we possibly could, I couldn’t even really think about what we would need beyond what we already have. And now that’s not good enough. I have made lists and we are checking them off. This baby will come, a few months from now, but she’ll come. And I need to be ready.

Having a second kid on top of a toddler makes me feel like I need to be extra prepared. I don’t know what chaos will occur with a new baby, little sleep, and needing to be an active parent to my already established and very present son. How do I balance the needs of everyone without losing my mind? I clean out closets and I make sure there is space for everything and I get rid of some of Gabe’s toys so we are not suffocating under a pile of stuff, and I rearrange the furniture in our bedroom 2-3 times. And I stop working earlier than I ever thought I would because even though a lot of choices are taken away from you as a pregnant person, even though your control is almost nothing in regards to your body, the baby inside you, and even how and when you can take time off to be with that new human you just made, I did decide to not renew this contract. I did decide to have an end date and not try and push through until the very end. And I am so ready.

2 thoughts on “So Ready”

I just want to say: you’ve got this. You are an extraordinarily loving and giving person, and you are going to ROCK at being a mom to both Gabe and your beautiful baby girl. And he is so lucky that he gets to have a sister, too. However prepared you are (or aren’t), it is enough. You are enough. You and Kamel are all that she needs, really, in the most important, pivotal sense. And I really believe it: you’ve got this.